Advice on cost of a garage conversion

Katie_96

My partner and I are looking to buy our first home together. My partner plays a lot of table top games with his friends and spends a lot of his spare time painting little plastic figures (I don't really get it, but it's better than football).
His one stipulation for a house (compared with my list) was a space for him to do that, ideally big enough to keep a table permanently up. Apart from one house with a big back room so he could have the front sitting room for it, it would likely require a garage conversion.
We've seen a lot of houses online (and got viewings in the pipeline) with detached single garages at the back of the house (mainly 90s built). They'll likely already have electric in them, he won't need running water, but he will need heating (apparently you can't paint with cold hands or gloves!) My parents have a concern that if we came to re-sell, a lot of buyers would still want a garage, even if they never park a car in it, so a permanent conversion might not be best. My mum's idea was to keep the garage door and put insulation and a stud wall on the inside (looks like a garage from the outside, feels like a room on the inside). It's got a window, but would need a door putting in.

Any ideas of a ballpark figure?

We've got quite a chunky deposit so it reduces our monthly mortgage repayments, but we can reduce that to take into account converting the garage.

FreeBear

Katie_96 wrote: »

My mum's idea was to keep the garage door and put insulation and a stud wall on the inside (looks like a garage from the outside, feels like a room on the inside). It's got a window, but would need a door putting in.

You would need to insulate the ceiling and floor in addition to the walls - A lot of damp comes up through your average garage floor as it doesn't always have a DPM built in. Budget wise, depends on how much work you want to do.. On a DIY basis, budget around £50 per square metre of floor/wall/ceiling.

womble12345

It cost me about £7000 to convert part of my garage into a utility room, this included knocking through from the hallway to create a door, running plumbing, fitting units, etc. I still have a tiny garage that looks like a garage from outside and has room for keeping a few bikes and tools in and I have a good sized utility room with an electric towel radiator for heating.
I rung local estate agents and they told me that some buyers would prefer a garage for a car and some a utility room so therefore it wouldnt effect resale value much.

Katie_96

womble12345 wrote: »

It cost me about £7000 to convert part of my garage into a utility room, this included knocking through from the hallway to create a door, running plumbing, fitting units, etc. I still have a tiny garage that looks like a garage from outside and has room for keeping a few bikes and tools in and I have a good sized utility room with an electric towel radiator for heating.
I rung local estate agents and they told me that some buyers would prefer a garage for a car and some a utility room so therefore it wouldnt effect resale value much.

Thank you
I think my parents are coming from a perspective that their garage is very very used, though not for a car. It's full of tools, ladders, their old bed (that I shall be claiming), it's used for my old stuff I had at uni and my brother's uni stuff when he's back between years.
It might be a question to ask the estate agent about the value. I'd rather do a full conversion and brick up the garage door, if it's unlikely to affect the value. I don't plan on moving again for a very long time, so at the moment, the value doesn't matter too much to me. But things change, we might suddenly decide we want to adopt orphaned sextuplets and need more space or one of us might get a big pay-rise and we can suddenly afford the 'dream house', so never say never.

onomatopoeia99

Katie_96 wrote: »

I think my parents are coming from a perspective that their garage is very very used, though not for a car. It's full of tools, ladders, their old bed (that I shall be claiming), it's used for my old stuff I had at uni and my brother's uni stuff when he's back between years.

My parents' garage is like this. Hasn't had a car in it for about 30 years :rotfl: and that was mine when I was at university and I used to do all the work on it during the vacations.

Nowadays it has a load of my brother's stuff in it that he didn't have space for when he did a loft conversion on his previous house and has never reclaimed since moving to a palatial four bed place.

Steve1908

Are there services in the garage, often there can be electricity meters, boilers and such that may need moving as part of the process and can add additional costing.

The price really depends on the level you want to take it too, if you want a nice space that feels exactly like a room in the rest of the house the costs are likely £20000 plus (dependant on location).